Thread: Handamerican Leather Choices

Joe,

I'm trying to sort things out. Is there a rule of thumb about drag vs. delicate ground razors and not delicate ground razors, or do you just have to wing it? In other words, should I always use a light drag strop on a 6/8 fully hollowed blade and a high drag strop on half hollowed wedges? It appears now that one has to make the same kind of decisions on selecting unpasted hanging strops as one does in selecting hones of differing grits. The fine art of straight razor shaving keeps getting more complicated the deeper I get into it. So much to learn and so little time....

Best,
Ken

Ken,
In all honesty, this won't make a tremendeous difference. A good piece of latigo leather will work well on any grind. Which is not to say that I wouldn't like to have a better variety of strops along my wall With that being said, if you have a greater variety of delicate grinds, it may not be a bad idea to go smooth and vice versa. If you've already made your purchase from HA or TM, enjoy it as you got a quality item that WILL do the job.

Thanks for that. The only reason I got involved with this thread is because I just received a new TM #1 best 3" latigo strop in a private trade. Before this I was using a TM #2 grade 2 1/2" latigo. I was amazed by how differently they performed. The #1 best strop had a #5 draw compared to a #3 draw for the #2 1/2" strop. Man, the razor almost stuck to the strop. The difference was like night and day. So now I have a similar set up as Joe described, a high draw strop and a lighter draw one. Only mine is on two separate strops. So you can see why I was interested in understanding when it would be better to use one or the other.

for razors the best is the double latigo, one side smooth the other diamond/Russian cut

Recommendation from Keith.

I have an order for two 3"x24" peices of 1/8" red latigo comming along with the hardware (handel and hook part) to make a strop. I'll let everyone know how it works out. Keith was very helpfull.

Eddie

I got keith's recommendation, and a very nice strop it is too. My razors finally pass the HHT!